Restaurant the Second!

I did not eat at restaurants much in Venezuela. We did not get nearly enough money. (Food was expensive, relative to how much money people made--at least if you bought stuff in cans, which we Americans mostly did, being Americans and accustomed to things in cans.) One evening, though, my companion and I decided to splurge, and we had a big chicken dinner at a Venezuelan grill-barbecue place. It was pretty good...grilled chicken, some kind of salad which we probably weren't supposed to eat, rice and beans (ubiquitous in Venezuelan cookery), arepa on the side...all the good stuff. I actually remember it more for our waiter than anything else, cuz, wow, that was weird. But that story will be held for another time!

That's pretty much Venezuelan food right there, by the way, except that they eat a lot of pasta too. (2nd in the world for pasta consumption per capita, after Italy, I was told. I wouldn't be surprised.) It's not exactly adventurous, although if you are a glutton for punishment many families have home-brewed hot oil (like hot sauce, except what you do is put peppers and things in a bottle with vegetable oil and let the capsaicin leach out into the oil) on the table. I was never much for that stuff, though, it was usually very hot indeed.

I first ate a shawarma in Venezuela, too, actually, from a street vendor in Cumana, if memory serves. It was one of the best shawarmas I've ever had, actually. The lavash there is better than it is here; either that or I was just hungrier back when I was a missionary and it made everything taste better.